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$1m advance for tale of a child haunted by 9/11

AN ACCLAIMED young American writer has received a $1m advance for a literary novel based on a child’s experience of losing his father in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. It promises to be the first bestseller inspired by the emotional impact of the outrage in 2001.

Jonathan Safran Foer, 28, has drawn a fictional portrait of a nine-year-old, Oskar Schell, who is haunted by his father’s death. In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, published next month, the boy roams New York looking for a lock that fits a mysterious key of his father’s.

Foer won a string of awards in Britain and America for his debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated, in which a young man searches Ukraine for the woman who saved his grandfather from the Holocaust.

“Both the Holocaust and 9/11 were events that demanded retelling,” Foer said. “With 9/11 in particular I wanted